


First Night

by Mici (noharlembeat)



Series: Eight Nights [1]
Category: Kings (TV 2009)
Genre: First Night, M/M, Non-Linear Narrative, Post-Series, holiday fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-16
Updated: 2014-12-16
Packaged: 2018-03-01 19:53:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,989
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2785691
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/noharlembeat/pseuds/Mici
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>This is what Jack doesn’t know: that this First Night, the beginning of the year where he’ll turn 20, this brief reprieve from the war where he’s been dragged back to Shiloh for the sheer joy of celebration, is the last one he’ll truly enjoy.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	First Night

**Author's Note:**

  * For [shewokeup](https://archiveofourown.org/users/shewokeup/gifts).



> This series borrows incredibly heavily from the Jewish tradition. Please keep that in mind!

It is the thickness of the liquor that drowses him, the sticky sensation of it on his tongue and against his throat, warm down his chest and into his belly, buzzing in the back of his brain. _First Night_ , he thinks. This has always been his favorite holiday, _First Night_ , a night designed by God for the welcoming of new things, the bringing in of a new year, the ushering in of fall and then winter, fat and sweet and wonderful. First Night.

This is what Jack doesn’t know: that this First Night, the beginning of the year where he’ll turn 20, this brief reprieve from the war where he’s been dragged back to Shiloh for the sheer joy of celebration, is the last one he’ll truly enjoy.

This is what Jack does know: that this First Night is replete with honey and drinks, with people touching him for all that there are days where a touch is the last thing he wants, with the buzz of Ronnie’s latest drug busy between his ears. He knows that somewhere his mother is fuming at the ceaselessness of war, and the cancelling – again – of a real First Night social event, making her make do with a party that doesn’t please her. He knows that in the high winged towers of Altar Mansion, Michelle is soaking in piety and in grace, avoiding the streets and the celebration outside of a dip of an apple into honey and contemplating whatever good deed she did that day. He knows that his father is there, too. Not with Michelle. With God.

But for Jack God is right here in the curve of a hip or the brush of a pair of lips on his skin, lush and beautiful, and he catches sight of that boy – Lasile, _that’s his name_ \- looking lost and unsure of himself, looking for all the world like an accountant lost at a party (which he is) and he gets up from his pile of admirers. 

“God, it’s First Night,” Jack mutters, and Lasile starts, no, _Joseph_ starts, surprised. “Tell me you didn’t come hunt me down for the sake of work.”

“I-look, it’s not-“ he stammers, and flushes, “-my boyfriend brought me,” he manages a bit, and Jack feels like there’s something sharp, then, something that pushes his chin up, even as Joseph continues to babble, “he’s over there, see?”

Jack gives the briefest look, the very shortest manageable, long enough to see, and recognize, yes, he knows that man, intimately, in one way, but then he can’t remember his name, and so how intimate can it truly be? “Isn’t the palace throwing a big party?”

“It ended two hours ago,” Jack replies, his attention sharply on Joseph again. They’d met at his accountant’s office, where Joseph is some assistant in a minor position, and he’d seen him every now and again, always a little unsure, always a little shy.

Undeniably cute, but Jack keeps that to-

Well, it’s First Night. A celebration. A new year. “Didn’t you get an invitation?” Jack asks into his ear, pressing his mouth against Joseph’s cheek. 

Joseph looks utterly and completely surprised, and he blushes furiously, but he doesn’t move away.

~~~~

When Jack was a child, they didn’t celebrate First Night together. When he was a child, he and Michelle would get sent off in a procession of cars, a fanfare of economic prosperity and the illusion of peace, to their grandparents outside the hills of Corinth. His mother’s father was a farmer of the rich variety, of the kind who does none of the work and all of the land-owning, and his mother’s mother was regal in ways even his mother couldn’t imitate.

_Yoni_ , she would call him, or _Yonatan_ , if she was cross, but she loved him, adored him, so mostly he was _Yoni_ like Michelle was _Michal _in her soft tongue, still more used to the old language. She would speak to him in it, which was something that the king and his advisers approved of, because it was seen as some link to whatever they thought culture might be. She would give them both First Night presents, wrapped in thick golden paper and topped with lush bows, and it was always something sweet and indulgent and unbelievably old fashioned, like colorful wooden toys that moved when he pulled the string, or crumbling rosewater candy made of nuts and dough, dripping in syrup, that would fill his mouth with perfume. Her hands were soft and wrinkled and she smelled like roses and jasmine, and she would let Jack sit in her lap even when his mother said he was too old to want to be cuddled like that.__

__He was a baby, he was her baby, right until he and Michelle turned eleven and Michelle got sick, and when First Night came around he saw the security detail getting ready with a car, and he hid in Michelle’s closet for three hours. Michelle couldn’t go, she couldn’t, and he couldn’t go by himself. It took a full two servicemen to try and pry him out and when they couldn’t manage, they got the king, who was a thundercloud of displeasure. It was the first time he had been that way at Jack_ _

__(it would not be the last)_ _

__and when Jack still refused to come out, for fear now of getting sent to a dark pit, wailing, “ _you’ll send me to exile_ ”, the king calmed. _ _

__They didn’t make him go._ _

__His grandmother died, a little later that year, and the last person who thought of him as a child was gone, really. He doesn’t remember much of that year’s First Night. He remembers apples, and honey, and sweet bread, but it was a sedate affair. The entire nation was in mourning. There is a part of Jack that wonders still, if he was afraid for his sister or afraid for himself, but really, he isn’t sure he knows the difference._ _

__~~~~~_ _

__“Why Jack-“ David asks him, on First Night, in one of those quiet moments where it’s just the two of them. It’s not a moment Jack particularly cares for. David is irritating in more than one fashion, and questions spill from the pinkness of his mouth with a lack of care that Jack finds tiresome in toddlers and utterly exhausting in adults._ _

__But this is First Night, this is Jack’s night, and with peace and Shiloh and the _ballet_ , all adding up together, it’s also the first time this holiday has felt like a real new year. A new year, a new peace, and maybe a new king, if his uncle has his way. Shiny and spit-polished, spun of silver. “Why Jack what?” he asks, casually, reaching for a drink. It’s syrupy and cloying and a bit too sweet, but Jack drinks it anyway and doesn’t make a face._ _

__“Why not Jon? Or Yoni?” David asks this as if Jack is an old buddy, a friend from school, and not his _prince_. It’s not the most puzzling thing that David has done, but it ranks up there, how David just ignores social class, how he just speaks to Jack like they’re equals._ _

__It’s not the most annoying thing about him, but it ranks highly. “Why not _Dave_ or _Dudi_ ,” Jack asks back in return, lifting his gaze to look up at him. There’s a glow around David, the light of the bar catching in his hair and bouncing, making him look cast in gold._ _

__David flushes, Jack can just see it in the dim light. “Do you speak the old language?”_ _

__“Enough to get by,” Jack says casually, although he is better than Michelle at it, better than Silas, but not better than Rose. Rose speaks it with precision, but she does everything like that. She would command an army fit for war unlike any the world has seen, if only she could be pried away from elevating the culture of the kingdom from the midden heap of clan wars._ _

__But David doesn’t seem appeased by his own change of subject. “So why Jack?”_ _

__“I didn’t choose it,” he finally admits, “come on, this is meant to be a celebration. Focus your attentions on more tender morsels. Or I’ll start calling you Dudi.” Jack reaches out, and at the end of his fingertips is a girl – there is always a girl, waiting there, Jack doesn’t know where they come from – and the way that David watches them kiss is enough to be arousing. The idea of him switching places with the girl makes Jack move her more, kiss her hard enough to bruise, bite, and wish it were David’s mouth if only for that instant._ _

__Later, David is half asleep on Jack in the backseat of the limo, drunk on wine and something darker, something close to adulation but much more potent, something Jack gives off in waves, and he says, “First Night, this is the best First Night present I’ve ever gotten.”_ _

__“I didn’t know your family was so traditional, Shepherd,” Jack says, barely looking up from his phone. Ronnie is suggesting a different bar, he is in the other car, because Jack doesn’t do anything by halves._ _

__“It’s the day we got the world, isn’t it? I always thought, this is the naming day, God, I’m drunk,” David _giggles,_ and Jack finally looks at him. He is glassy eyed, that point of drunk where he will not remember this, so Jack touches his mouth with a finger and David licks the tip of it, takes his finger with a reverent kind of kiss. “It’s like you’re not real. A ghost.”_ _

__“You can say that again only after I die,” Jack says drolly, and wants to taste the inside of David’s mouth, but he doesn’t. Despoiling him would serve the kingdom – and the king – right, but when Jack’s mind alights on the notion for more than a moment, he feels sick to his stomach, and not for lack of desire. For the last bit of virtue in him, perhaps._ _

__~~~~~_ _

__At thirteen a girl kisses him on First Night, wet and uninspired and damp-handed, and Jack bats her away. It is Thomasina who finds him that night, sitting sullenly and not attending the party, and tells him that kisses are not so hard, when you like a person._ _

__Jack likes Thomasina well enough, but not enough for kissing, and she laughs. The laugh will go away, with time, with knowledge._ _

__~~~~~_ _

__David imagines God inscribing it in the Book of Life, and thinks that even with that, with the memory of the act inscribed in his head, it was not worth it. David will forgive God everything but this._ _

__David is crowned on First Night, like a true sign, for all that they held the city and the country for almost seven months before the holy day. His prophet dips whole apples in golden honey and passes them out, and there are children with sticky hands and sticky mouths across the lawn of the new house of God. “You are my ghost,” David says aloud to the air, “I name you Jonathan.”_ _

__~~~~_ _

__Joseph did not want to know. He said Jack’s name in pleasure and in reverence but only ever _Jack_ , only ever that. When Jack stole him from his boyfriend, on Second Night, it was for naught but the joy of having what he wanted, the attitude of a prince spoiled on wishes and wants made real, and the sound of Joseph saying his name as the year opened, like it would keep him whole, supplication for mercy. _ _

__David never said his name like that._ _

__David said his name like a song, like it was a prayer that would mend the world. _Jack_._ _

__~~~~_ _

__“On First Night, God gave the world to us, Yoni. So we must celebrate it, for it is the greatest gift we have.”_ _

__“Better than kings?”_ _

__“Better than kings.”_ _


End file.
